


Exulansis

by whitchry9



Series: 23 Emotions [5]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Blindness, Disability, Friendship, Gen, canon disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:12:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4807607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of people ask Matt what it's like to be blind. But they just don't understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exulansis

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [23emotions](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/23emotions) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> Exulansis:  
> (n) The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it.

“What is it like not being able to see?” the children at the orphanage asked. Matt didn't know how to tell them.

“It's like having your eyes closed all the time, and you can never open them,” he told them instead, because it was what they wanted to hear.

But it wasn't true.

Because it didn't matter whether his eyes were open wide or screwed tightly shut, he still heard everything. And when he said heard, he meant sensed, which formed some sort of visual picture that he could barely begin to make sense of, let alone explain to children half his age.

So he told them what they wanted to hear.

 

 

Stick knew. Matt thought he did, anyway. Every time he tried to talk about it, Stick would hit him or throw something at him or remind him that sight was only a distraction.

So they didn't talk about it either.

 

 

Foggy only asked the once, when they were drunk, what it was like to be blind. Matt suspected Foggy didn't even remember it.

Matt had hummed and hawed, and finally told Foggy that it was like those times when it was completely dark, and no matter how wide you opened your eyes, you couldn't see, and you knew where everything was but it didn't help because every step you took was into the infinite abyss.

It was closer to the truth than what he'd told anyone else.

 

 

Then there was Claire. Claire knew what he could do, and at the same time, knew what he couldn't. She had a hard time reconciling the blind man she had laid out on her couch, and the vigilante who rescued her from a garage in the dark.

“What do you actually see?” she asked, as Matt patched her up in his kitchen.

Matt looked at her, and saw nothing. But he heard how she moved in the room, how her hair sat on her shoulders, how the temperature shifted around her and air currents changed and her heartbeat marked her place out and when all of that came together it was a beautiful mess of sensory input that he'd really only begun to be able to read.

“A world on fire,” he told her.

It wasn't a lie.

 

 

Foggy asked a second time, but this time it was wrapped in anger and betrayal and only a slight hint of alcohol, and Matt knew he would remember this answer.

 

So he tried to pull himself up on the couch, tried to coax his pain addled and blood deprived brain into composing words, explanations that he couldn't come up with at the best of times.

He thought he did well, considering, and sat back, waiting for Foggy's judgement. Praying that he would believe him, all the while knowing he'd likely never quite understand.

 

“So you can see?” he asked, and Matt's heart sank even further than he thought possible.

 

Foggy left, and Matt still hadn't gotten him to understand.

He supposed that was alright; no one really understood.

 

 

Foggy's breathing changed, and Matt knew he was about to ask something.

“I want to know... how you see.”

“I don't see Foggy,” Matt sighed, running his fingers over his braille display again, in the hopes the information would suddenly present itself so he could leave this conversation behind.

Foggy set down his box of Chinese food. Karen had left hours ago, and it was just the two of them in the office.

 

“I'm sorry about... you know, accusing you of faking being blind.”

“I already told you that it was okay,” Matt sighed.

“Right, but that's not what I'm asking. How do you... I don't know, I don't remember what you called it. But your seeing thing. I really do want to know,” Foggy repeated. Matt listened. It was the truth.

“Oh,” he said. “I don't really know how to explain it, because no one has ever listened before. I mean, I've run through the conversation over and over, but it never goes well.”

“And part of that is my fault.”

“No, it's really not. Just... let me try, okay?”

Foggy nodded. He didn't tell Matt that he did, but Matt could tell he considered it.

 

He started off, Foggy listening intently with all of his being, trying desperately to know what it was Matt experienced.

“The first thing you have to understand is that I don't see anything. My eyes are useless. The world on fire thing that I called it before, it's there whether my eyes are open or not. The second thing is...”

 

Foggy listened and asked questions, and despite the forgotten paperwork, when Matt finally went home that night, he felt like he'd finally gotten something accomplished. Because maybe Foggy didn't know exactly what Matt 'saw', but he understood how he did it. And that was a start.

 

 


End file.
